We’ll air our regular weekly episode on Thursday, May 3—a day late—so that we can include as much May Day 2018 coverage as possible. Please e-mail us your May Day action reports by May 2 at podcast@crimethinc.com.

Notes and Links

Table of Contents:

Introduction {0:00}

May Day and colonial desertion in the new world {2:55}

The Paris Commune {9:55}

Haymarket {11:40}

May Day 1971: mass coordinated direct action and repression in Washington D.C. {15:08}

When punk was new(s) {16:25}

Class War UK {26:15}

The first American black bloc {32:40}

N30: Seattle 1999 {38:20}

A choir of criminals {1:00:40}

News from the balcony with Waldorf & Statler {1:11:55}

Trotsky’s ash cookies {1:21:10}

G20 Toronto 2010: the end of the world as we know it, or the beginning of the revolution? {1:23:40}

The Liberation News Service, a Washington DC-based collective with anarchist participants. They collected resistance and counter-culture news from all over the world and syndicated it to different underground publications in the 1960s and 70s—sort of like a radical Reuters.

About our Black Bloc historiography: we put in a few hours researching the history of the Black Bloc in North America before making the claim that the 1991 anti-Gulf War actions in DC saw the first Black Bloc in North America. While Black Bloc tactics, including dark clothing and masks, featured in protests in Berkeley, Minneapolis, and New York in the late 80s, as far as we can tell the first call including the term “Black Block” was for the anti-Gulf War protest in Washington DC in 1991. We’re willing to be proven wrong though!

Fundraising:

Donate to the legal support fund for the four people charged over last year’s May Day actions in Olympia.

About CrimethInc.

CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age. We strive to reinvent our lives and our world according to the principles of self-determination and mutual aid.

We believe that you should be free to dispose of your limitless potential on your own terms: that no government, market, or ideology should be able to dictate what your life can be. If you agree, let’s do something about it.